Featured Artwork: Kelli Folsom

Kelli Folsom is an emerging artist specializing in dramatic light and shadow still life painting. Since graduating from art school with her B.F.A. from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in 2011 she has received numerous awards and scholarships for her work including, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s Anna Lee Stacey scholarship, Southwest Art and American Art Collector Magazine’s Award of Excellence and the Oil Painters of America Honorable Mention Award in Figurative art. Kelli’s work has also been featured recently in PleinAir magazine. Her work has been exhibited in many museum shows, represented by several galleries, and is in numerous private collections across the country.

She loves capturing the many different textures, patinas and surface qualities that can be found in still life. Her work is imbued with a sense of movement, light, atmosphere and color that makes the painting feel like it’s alive and real. She feels there is no better way to get this lifelike quality into the work than by working directly from nature. She enjoys taking a great deal of time to set up the still lifes in her studio finding objects that work well together and create a visual story.

Some of Kelli’s greatest still life influences are William Merritt Chase, Frans Mortelmans and contemporary artists David Leffel, Sherrie McGraw and Gregg Kreutz. She has worked to perfect a look of depth and luminosity through an alla prima painting technique.

“I have always loved painting still life. It is amazing the memorable connections we can have with things. I delight in hearing that one of my paintings reminded someone of their childhood, of gardening or cooking with their grandmother.”

Andrew Webster is the Editor of Fine Art Today and works as an editorial and creative marketing assistant for Streamline Publishing. Andrew graduated from The University of North Carolina at Asheville with a B.A. in Art History and Ceramics. He then moved on to the University of Oregon, where he completed an M.A. in Art History. Studying under scholar Kathleen Nicholson, he completed a thesis project that investigated the peculiar practice of embedded self-portraiture within Christian imagery during the 15th and early 16th centuries in Italy.